We have been blessed with such an amazing contact here. His name is Pastor Keat and he runs the church and the school we are teaching English at. We had the privilege of hearing his story and testimony. If you don’t know much about the Khmer Rouge, I suggest you Google it and study up some. I think it’s something people need to be aware of. The skinny on it is that after the French left Indochina and gave independence to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1950’s basically a monarchy took over running the country. Around this time is when communism really started spreading all over the world. Once China fell to communism, much of Southeast Asia did as well. At this time in Cambodia, many of the people were not too happy with the current monarchy. One of the communist parties in the country, the Khmer Rouge with the support of China and the USSR took advantage of the unrest and there was a civil war for the control of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge won and in 1975 they took control of the country. The expelled everyone and I mean literally everyone from the major cities and sent them to the rural areas to work the fields and cultivate the land. If you refused to go, you were killed. If you were a government official or part of the military you were killed. If you were educated, lived in the city, wore glasses, were foreign, or just because, you could be killed. The Khmer Rouge were in power till 1979, then Vietnam invaded and ended their regime. In that time between civil war, starvation, illness and disease due to most of the doctors and nurse being executed, and mass killings 2-3 million people of a country around 7 million were died. A genocide unlike any other had occurred, even after allied forces said at the end of World War II and the discovery of concentration camp “Never again,” here it was, happening again. I’m not trying to debate the actions taken or not taken by the world governments while this was going. What I want to tell you is a little bit about pastor Keat’s experience during this time.
Pastor Keat lived in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge came. He was forced with his family to leave the city and sent to his home village. There he worked the fields, often digging trenches and ditches that had no discernable purpose. He survived for 4 years on only a few hours of sleep a night, only 3 days off work a year and on not enough food to feed even a child, let alone a grown adult doing hard manual labor every day. Pastor said he and others would often supplement their diet by catching spiders, grubs and other insects as well as by eating rats, snakes and anything else they could get their hands on without their guards seeing. During this time, no one was allowed to get married. Often those who were married beforehand were separated. In 1979, Pastor was told he could marry someone from the village. He counted himself lucky for being this choice because many were not even afforded the opportunity to choose who they would marry; they were simply paired with someone. He married his current wife without ever having a conversation with her in his entire life. Soon after the Vietnam army took control of the country and much of the Khmer Rouge guards left their posts. So Pastor took his wife and what was left of his family and crossed to Thailand. While in Thailand he came across a Christian pastor from Cambodia, one of only about 3 who had survived. He listened to what was being said and there he devoted his life to Christ. Soon after his uncle who lived in California sponsored him and brought him to the states. While there Pastor Keat worked in construction. He had developed such a strong work ethic after being worked so hard in the fields in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge that working 2 jobs and working weekends and holidays was easy compared to what he had to do. In no time Pastor had earned his contracting license, built his own house and many others in Hawaii. In the mid 90’s he came back to Cambodia. By this time he owned 3 properties in Hawaii, one of which he sold to build the church and school that we are living and working in right now. The other two properties he rents out to help provide income for the church and school. Pastor Keat said that when he came to Cambodia he had $20 in his pocket. He now runs a school with over 200 children, and pastors a church with the same number of attendees. At the end of his story Pastor Keat said “I am thankful for my time with the communists. It gave me the chance to know how to work hard and made everything I have today possible.” You don’t often here someone tell you they are thankful for nearly being worked to death, starved and living under constant fear for your life. Pastor gives all glory to what God can do and what he has planned. He said God can turn the worst situations into the most blessed ones. He thanks God over and over again for his ordeal and what God has blessed his life with since then. I think if nothing else, a story such as his, is quite a gut check to many of us. I know it has been for me.
